Movie Review: Dylan Dog: Dead of Night

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Big pushes for Fast Five and Disney's Prom for my movie money this weekend. Checking out Fandango to see other options and Dylan Dog: Dead of Night came up. Hadn't seen any previews for this one but read the description. Werewolves, vampires and zombies...OH MY! Why not give it a shot.

When I walked into my regular theater, I was only half way in when I got approached by one of the assistant managers. He wanted to inform me that they now have burgers, fries, fried cheese sticks and jalapeno poppers on the menu. Found out they have a new special oven and fry-o-later in back. They didn't have counter signage saying new items are available and the electronic boards showed the items at $4.50 or $7.50 in price, but they really didn't give an idea of the size of the serving. With Japan's influence in Hawaii I thought they might have one of the plastic models of the dish in the glass case to show you what you'd get. They didn't. If they price the new food like they do with soda, you'd get one, maybe two poppers for the $4.50. He was really excited about the new offerings, so maybe next time I'll try something since I now know that they have it.

The movie ran for 107 minutes and kept my attention. The werewolves and vampires were the bad guys with the zombies providing the comic relief. As typical in this genre of movie monster and things that go bump in the night there is an uneasy balance between all sides. The stability among the undead is maintained by one human who knows their secrets and knows that they really do exist as they try to mix in among the living in the Crescent City of New Orleans. Dylan Dog (Brandon Routh) has been chosen as the arbiter for the creatures of the night.

Dylan has been in retirement as balance keeper but gets dragged out of it when a local importer/exporter is killed. Looks like he and a large furry creature had an unexpected meeting and the man didn't survive the get together. Working with the man's daughter, Elizabeth (Anita Briem), they discover only one item has been taken. Now with Elizabeth in tow along with his friend Marcus (Sam Huntington) who recently acquired some special skills they traipse around the city to solve the mystery of the stolen object.

The werewolves control a meat packing plant. The vampires run a night club. The zombies do business in a specialized body parts shop. Pretty stereotypical when you think of the monster types. Ultimately when they find out why the item was stolen the fate of both the monster world and the human world hangs in the balance.

Routh delivers his lines with aplomb, a cool confidence of a man who knows how to deal with the dark forces as easily as an eight year old can put letters in a mail box. Marcus on the other hand is constantly flying off the handle as he must learn as Uncle Ben said to Peter Parker, with great power comes great responsibility. Ah, the struggles of being the go get it guy! Director Kevin Munroe struggled to find the right balance between taking our heroes seriously and taking them too seriously so that they crossed over into the land of campiness.

Hats off to the special effects and makeup guys for the monsters. They all looked pretty good! As an aside, why would a vampire in his right mind have southern facing windows in his bedroom? I'm just sayin!

Overall I don't think the movie will do well this weekend, maybe a late September or October release would have served them better. The flick was rated PG-13 for sequences of creature violence and action, language including some sexual references, and some drug material. Funny that for the drug material they don't distinguish between real world drugs and made up monster drugs! Again, I'm just sayin.

The Movie Monkey

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Movie Review: The Twilight Saga: New Moon

New Moon is supposed to have a big opening weekend leading into the Thanksgiving holiday. It probably will regardless of what I write here. Team Vampire Edward or Team Werewolf Jacob? Could care less, I just wanted to see a good movie. I saw the first movie and only know the story by the movies.

The first movie Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) meets this mysterious person, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). I bit of mystery, a bit of intrigue until the big reveal, he's a vampire. He can read other peoples thoughts but not hers. She's attracted to the bad boy vampire who pulls her bacon out of the fire a couple of times (avoids getting crushed by a car and possible brutalization by some thugs). They get along. Alright, I can deal with that.

We get into this episode the heroine Bella is all moody. She's having her birthday getting older but Edward being a vampire is permanently frozen physically at age 17 although he's really now 109. She doesn't want to loose him so she's asking him to turn her into a vampire. He says no because she doesn't understand the ramifications of becoming a blood sucker including the state of her soul.

Through a series of events Edward says that he must leave her forever in order to protect her. She wants to go. He says no and disappears. She chases after him but he can move super fast and she can't so there's no way she's going to catch him. She figures he'll come back to protect her so she decides to sleep in the forest. Never mind about her dad and his concern that his daughter is missing.

Bella gets all depressed and hangs in her bed room ignoring the world as it passes by. She finally decides to join the living. While out with a classmate she ignores the classmate for another reckless act with possible thugs on a motorcycle. During the escapade Edward appears to her. She figures that the adrenaline rush causes the Edward image. She decides that she'll trying riding a motorcycle to try to get Edward back. She enlists her childhood friend Jacob (Taylor Lautner) to help her repair a motor cycle. During the process she starts to fall for him.

When the bike is finally finished Jacob tries to help her to ride and she ignores him and speeds off. She does see Edward images again before skidding into a rock where she hurts her head. Jacob comes over and takes off his shirt to wipe up the blood. In the theater, the ladies went wild and made cat calls since Taylor put on 30 pounds of muscle in order to keep the role.

Turns out Jacob has a gene as part of his American Indian heritage that is responsible for his transformation within the storyline. He and several others can transform into werewolves at will. They don't like vampires and there is a treaty between the two sides. He tries to protect her and shows his love towards her.

Jacob cares for Bella, but she used him to get her rush via the motorcycle. Through out the movie everything that people tell Bella not to do, she does. She has feelings for Jacob, she has feelings for Edward, she ignores her father, she dismisses the warnings of both the vampires and the werewolves. That is what put me off on this episode of the series was Bella's character.

She was self centered not caring about the feelings of her classmates, her dad, Jacob or Edward. She wanted what she wanted and screw the consequences or who she might hurt either physically or emotionally in the process. She didn't even care about the state of her soul as long as she could be with Edward. I found that me, me, me attitude extremely annoying and as a result it was hard for me to watch this film. Although I didn't look at my watch, I sat there wondering why this movie was dragging on and when it would be over. Ever been to the party and there's that ONE person who annoys you and you can't get away? Yeah, I'm sure you know what I mean. This selfish self absorbed character just grated on me and caused me to not enjoy the movie.

Was the movie good? With the "the world has got to center around me" attitude of Bella, I found it hard to watch this 2 hour and 10 minute "love" story.

Something that I did find interesting during this movie experience was the number of young kids in this movie. Even with the PG-13 rating, the themes were a little advanced for the number of 4-8 year olds that were in the theater. Another distraction though the movie were cell phones. I didn't hear anyone talking on them or having them ring, but the number of cell phone screen lights that were present through the movie was a little surprising.